The Execution Ground on Amager (Dalslandsgade)

Köpenhamn · Danmark · Execution site

The blood of the executed was believed to cure the sick. When Ole Kollerød was beheaded in 1840, two women filled a cup — and danced around the scaffold.

At what is now Dalslandsgade on Amager stood an old Swedish redoubt from the siege of Copenhagen, which in 1806 was given a new and grimmer task: the city's public place of execution. For half a century the condemned were brought out here onto the common, and 35 people lost their heads under the executioner's axe while crowds watched; the bodies were long left hanging on the gallows as a warning. An ancient folk belief clung to the place: the blood of the executed was held to have healing power. When the robber-murderer Ole Kollerød was executed here in 1840, two women managed to fill a cup with his blood and gave it to a third, sick woman — while they danced around the scaffold. The last to die here was the journeyman smith Christian Julius Jensen in 1857. Today apartment blocks rise over the place where the axe fell.

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Hvor ligger The Execution Ground on Amager (Dalslandsgade)?

The Execution Ground on Amager (Dalslandsgade) ligger i Köpenhamn, Danmark.

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